Quoted from PtownPin:
Its certainly subjective, and thats great u like Martinez (never been there), but in my area Danville, Alamo, Pleasanton what u describe doesn't exist...in general the costs in these areas are $1.5-2M for something thats nice...its ridiculous....
You do realize the East Bay expands far beyond those boundaries? Speaking of things that are ridiculous, I think it's ridiculous for you to make such a statement about how knowledgeable you are about this, that, and the other, and then say something like you've never been to Martinez... There's this fallacy that's been put out there, NorCalRealtor talks about it, that everything in the Bay Area is unaffordable when that's simply not true.
Yes, your area is expensive, no doubt. But to make such a blanket statement based on one generalized area doesn't make much sense.
For the rest of the country commenting on our real-estate values here, no one is disputing you can buy more (usually far more) somewhere else outside of LA/SF Bay Area. As such, you can think our property values here are as ridiculous as you want but our weather here is as close to perfect as it gets, really can say the same thing for the entire CA coast, and our proximity to high-paying jobs is unlike anywhere else in the US. Things are so expensive here because the market dictates they be, that's how it works. If no one wanted to live here and there weren't a gluttonous amount of high-paying jobs, then no doubt the real-estate prices wouldn't be so high comparatively speaking.
Jeff